


Future Proof

by enrychuda



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-14
Updated: 2014-06-14
Packaged: 2018-02-04 14:35:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1782508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enrychuda/pseuds/enrychuda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean knows something is up with Logan, who won't tell her why he's been so distant. Time alone makes them confront their conflicting feelings. Follows canon from the Original Trilogy, the Wolverine and Days of Future Past. Jean/Logan all the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Future Proof

**Author's Note:**

> This has absolutely no plot (really, I don't even try). My main objective was to explore Jean and Logan and how they feel about each other in post-Days of Future Past canon where Logan remembers the events of the Last Stand and Jean doesn't. I always liked their intense connection and almost-could-have-beens. This follows suit.

This is the exact situation he did his best to avoid and Jean knew it. 

She wasn’t supposed to read his mind, and she didn’t… technically. The emotions permeated through his skin, impossible to ignore. Conflict, guilt, adoration, he’d look at her for one second or two, whenever she wasn’t looking of course, and those feelings came forth. On the surface he was as cool as ever, too cool. It made her curious, and more than a little confused. When a guy hits on you for years, you kind of get used to it. Now he was distant in every possible way. If she came into a room where he was alone, he made some excuse to leave it. If the team was being briefed, he stood on the opposite of wherever she was in the room. He was polite and curt, his every word to her charged with a different energy than before.

They reached for the radio at the same time, their fingers touching for less than a second. Her power reached instinctively, finding some of the old Logan. Desire mixed with the agony of wanting someone you can’t have. Never before had it been this bittersweet.

“Go ahead,” he said. 

Jean found a music station she liked and alternated between the road ahead and the man beside her. Logan wanted a cigar. She didn’t have to read his mind to know that. He patted his chest to check for the familiar outline, but stopped himself. 

“ _You_ go right ahead,” she said. 

She hadn’t realized before that he never smoked any more. 

“I know you don’t like it.”

Jean was surprised. “Who says?”

Logan waited some before taking out his cigar, already nipped and ready to be smoked. He couldn’t look at her for long, needing to focus on the highway, but he did it anyway. It’s the longest he’s looked at her in months. Whatever he wanted to say, he kept it to himself. Another thing he tended to do whenever he was around her.

He searched for his lighter, leveling the wheel with one hand. The truck didn’t swerve, just leaned slightly toward the dividing line. Jean went into his back pocket and took out the zippo. Logan’s slight squirming delighted her.

“You could have done that with your power.”

“You’re right.”

Logan grinned, but the conflict, guilt, and adoration were still there for her to sense. It made him force down his laugh, made him look at her with a strange sadness she couldn’t place. 

Smoke fumes swirled in the truck, sharp and completely Logan. 

She missed that smell. She missed him. 

“You know,” he said, very serious. “I never apologized.”

She was not expecting that at all. “Apologized? What for?” 

“A few years ago. When we were dealing with Stryker and you read Nightcrawler’s mind in the woods. I kissed you. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Jean laughed. “We’re going to have to get you checked when we get back home.”

Logan pretended to be offended. “Is there any particular reason?”

“You’re nice to Scott. You’re a great history professor. You haven’t left the school in months. You haven’t said three words to me.”

“I have. Right now, I’m speaking to you.”

“Because the Professor had us investigate together. If you had a choice.”

“I’d choose you,” he said defensively, lying through his teeth.

“Sure.” 

Jean smiled and stared out the window, glad to provoke him. 

Then: “You think I’m a great history professor?”

Jean let the silence linger. “You are,” she said, still smiling. This time it was guilt that she sensed. “Logan, why won’t you talk to me?”

Logan swallowed down hard. “It’s respect, Jean. I was an asshole before. Always on you when you belonged to someone else. I’m not that guy anymore.”

“That’s not it.”

“Are you reading my mind?”

“I don’t have to.”

Something in Logan flared. He threw away the cigar and tightened his hands on the wheel. He had a face shaped for anger, all angles and severity. 

They didn’t say another word.

-

 

“Just one left, folks. Rain’s drawing in all the night riders.”

“Of course there’s only one room.” Logan snatched the keys from the clerk and left the main office where Jean waited.

They were parked farthest from the main office on the other side of the lot and were drenched by the time they reached the cover of the motel. Damn, she looked good soaking wet.

Logan gave her the key. “Go get some sleep.”

“No. You’re not staying in the truck, Logan.”

“Can't I?” he said, already walking away. 

Jean didn’t have the strength to stop him, and he knew she wouldn’t mind control him, but he stopped when she grabbed his arm. “You may be a great professor, but you’re just as belligerent as some of our students. You’re coming in the room or I’m going to make you.”

She was kidding, pleading too, and he couldn’t make her feel bad. He’d sneak out when she slept.

“Or you can sleep on the floor, or the chair,” she said, walking ahead of him.

“You’re reading my mind again?”

“I never have and never will, Logan.”

The farthest room was also the smallest. Fortunately it was sanitary. The one bed had clean sheets, and the dresser and table and chair were dusted. It even had a flat screen against the wall, but there was a sign because of the rain: no cable. 

Logan took off his jacket and watched Jean as she entered the little bathroom on the other side. She removed her jacket too, next her shoes, then her white blouse, transparent because of the rain. She wore a stringed white top underneath that left her shoulders bare.

Logan sat, taking her suggestion to sleep on there, and kept watching, transfixed.

He’d seen her so many times after he killed her. Every woman of her same height and red hair that passed him was Jean. She haunted his dreams and refused to leave even when he had let her go. He buried himself in his new teaching position and the missions for Professor X to not constantly think of her. 

Now she was always nearby, and though fully clothed, those shoulders did things to him. 

She squeezed out the water in her long, red hair. Somehow her hair was redder than before, brighter. She tied it up the way women did without any stick or band, all bundled up quick like magic. He wanted to fold her in his arms and feel her back melt against his chest. He wanted to kiss her glistening neck and promise her a thousand times he would never hurt her again. 

The only way to do that was to stay away, as far away as he could. 

_Great job, asshole._

Jean caught him staring through the reflection. She smiled and he pretended to get comfortable on the chair. Once it was Jean who avoided him and jumped through hoops to deny they had something. She definitely had more grace about it. He almost fell on his ass when he brought the other chair to rest his feet.

She went under the covers and lay on her side, facing him. Their eyes locked. For once he didn’t look away. 

She was beautiful. Not exactly as he remembered. More haunted, older and wiser, perhaps experiencing the shade of what was or had been or could be, he didn’t fucking know. 

Yet instead of being frightened of the Phoenix power inside of her, he was entranced, knowing she could tear him apart if she ever wanted. She almost did. 

“I wish I could read your mind right now,” she said quietly. 

“You wouldn’t want to,” he said.

The Phoenix was fierce and terrible to behold. She was also doomed and he was the one to bring that doom on her. His metal claws had dug into her stomach then retracted, her red blood staining her already red corset, making it darker, scarier. She had let out a little sigh as the pain drained out of her eyes. She died in his arms with a sad smile on her face, finally done with killing, finally at peace, finally Jean again. He took that from her. He took her life. 

Logan stood up. It was his turn to plead. “I’m gonna go sleep in the truck, alright?” 

He was at the door when she called out his name. 

Don’t look back, he told himself. Don’t look back because if you look back, you might do something stupid, something like break the space separating them to kiss her. 

Logan looked back.

Jean was sitting up, looking hurt and confused and gorgeous. Like in his dreams, she was in white. Unlike those dreams, she said no more. 

He heard her whisper his name in his mind when they joined, felt the longing he only suspected coming at him full force. Her body felt familiar and frightening in his arms. His tongue tangled with hers as if in a fight drawing to a close on a draw, all exhaustion and refusal to back down. They came apart and he kissed her more, making up for all the kisses they never had. He kissed her lips again and again, and her cheeks and jaw and neck and chest where he had never tread. Her fingers twined with his hair and kept him close, her heart beating hard against his ear as he kissed her breast. She kissed the top of his head.

_Logan, I missed you. I missed you so much. So much… so much…_

Some instinct made them stop there. He was right, some things never changed.

The high of having her in his arms made way for the fear of when he last had her. His hands closed on her shirt at the small of her back. Behind his knuckles his claws pulsed.

“Jean…”

Her own fingers tightened around his hair, and he felt her chest rise and fall. Swept by the moment, she had unknowingly entered him and connected them beyond whatever love they could have made. Logan wanted to stop her going over his memories of the future that never was, but he could never tell her, he didn't know how. Her tears fell on his face when he looked up her.


End file.
